


paridevita

by Medhasree



Category: Baahubali (Movies), Hindu Religions & Lore
Genre: Angst, Deities, Gen, History, Kuntala, Mahishmati, Metaphors, Mortals and Gods, Multi, Parallels, Personification, Pre-Canon, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-07 19:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medhasree/pseuds/Medhasree
Summary: When the Lands speak . . . the universe of Baahubali comes alive through the sleepless eyes of the unvoiced.





	1. viprakriti

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arpita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arpita/gifts), [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



> The Sanskrit title 'Paridevita' (noun) means lament.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then, Maahishmati remembers no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sanskrit title 'Viprakriti' stands for variation, change, retaliation, opposition, offence, injury - all applicable based on how you wish to perceive this.

**| paridevita - viprakriti |**

In a different world, Maahishmati disregards her past.

She doesn't forget, only ignores it.

She doesn't weave tales over truth. She doesn't transmogrify swords into urumis. She doesn’t recast words of beach sand to stone slabs. She doesn’t braid meat on skeleton, tailor smooth skin over it, and then wrap in gossamer those bones that may never have felt the brush of cotton over non-existent flesh.

No. She sees how opportunely mankind forgets the goods and bads of past, and replaces, substitutes them with their own realities. She sees how kings and victors use metal to win prowess. She sees it all and allows the Sacred Fire burning above the crown of her palace blaze forth the testament to her omniscience.

This is a world where Maahishmati remembers the snakes slithering over her soil and Naga feet thundering their exotic dances on it.

She remembers her children--and oh, how the very definition of the word has changed--living by the Law of Prakriti. (She still cannot see what was so _wrong_ in Matsya-nyaay.)

She remembers what she was before the children of Heheya advanced upon her land. The Naga feet stopped their arrhythmic thumps in favour of metrical strains. (But she wouldn’t know that. She knows harmony, not what makes it.)  

She remembers life before the architectural sensations rose. Before her limbs were cut down to make place for the people entrenching on her hallowed lands like ant to sugar. They toiled over her, like ants do, and were smarter together than alone, but failed to comprehend this simple arthropodal logic.

She remembers the times before her limbs were banished to crooks and corners of the red cities they made out of her soil. She remembers experiencing greater emotions than the gratitude she feels when she is allowed to retain those small pieces of land as wild and unmannered as she desires.

She remembers when all her girls walked like Sivagami.

She remembers when her females needed the endorsement or validation of no Agni Deva to let their fingers trail the expanse of whatever skin they wanted against theirs, at whichever time.

She remembers when her land was hers and her children smiled and took care of her resting soil and gay limbs with no complaint and reaped the rewards of their own labour with no question of gratefulness to her or to the Almighty. They needed only be proud of their sweat and blood.  

She remembers it all. She remembers, and she ignores them.

Then she sees her _now_ , as her soil slips from her limbs.

She sees how her girls pour oblations to the Sacred Fire for _granting_ them their liberty. She sees how even the far-sighted as Sivagami seek out glory measured in borders and disregard the right of females beyond Maahishmati’s soil to choose their mates.

She sees how her children form codes unknown and unneeded, misunderstood and prone to exploitation, and when they deviate from their own rules, they punish their own.

She sees how they transgress the natural boundaries of men and women and appoint the sin in accordance with their law.

(What is law if not Prakriti, and what is Prakriti if not compassion?)

Maahishmati looks to her sister--a similar, familiar city in a distant universe sharing her name--and holds her eyes. A lifetime shared, a past shared, a similar future coming to fruition, and she can look no longer.

 _Some things never change,_ she whispers, exiled to the bowels of the red cities,

_red_

_red_

_red_

... as exiled as her Baahu’s trust, as exiled as her Sivagami’s corpse, as exiled as her Devasena’s compassion, as exiled as her Mahendra’s identity, as exiled as her Bhalla’s love, as exiled as her Bijjala’s remorse, as exiled as her Kattappa’s belief, as exiled as her Kumar’s innocence.

 _Some things never change,_ she speaks in the caverns of Bhallaladeva’s haunted mind as he sees Amarendra’s lightning-smile behind his nephew’s rage, in the twist of Bijjaladeva’s arm as Devasena doesn’t even deign to look at him as she raises the crown.

 _Some things never change,_ she snarls up at the Sacred Fire burning yojanas above her, accusing, demanding justice she knows doesn’t exist.

And so, Maahishmati turns her wheel back to the first brick pounded on her flesh (as if beating will increase her beauty) . . . and waits. She will never be called impatient, impulsive. She awaits Mahakaal to work a miracle, a son like Amarendra, a daughter like Sivagami; Mahakaal allows her this, but some things never change.

. . . silenced, murdered, exiled . . .

Not this world. Her world has been sentenced. Acceptance is her only way out.

Beyond the fabric of time and space, her sister smiles.

Maahishmati closes her eyes of omniscience and erases her mind of memories. She lets the men--her children no more--write her story.

And then, she remembers no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is perhaps one of my vaguest fics till date and kudos to those who can spot the references. *runs*  
>   
> I wanted to write something from Maahishmati's perspective, as she reviews and recalls her history, and this churned out. (I am...lowkey proud? I wrote and edited this in 30 mins, of course, I am! And drowsiness makes me narcissistic.)  
>   
> Just a note: Though the fic starts with the explicitly stated idea of a different world, it may as well be the canon universe. (For, who is to say what's ours and what isn't?) ;p
> 
> Please leave a word or two. :)


	2. prasuti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is the child with possibilities of virtue and vice, and yet unsoiled. She will stay thus for a long time. She learns – it won’t be evermore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sanskrit title 'Prasuti' stands for parent, procreation, procreator, child and parturition - all applicable based on how you wish to perceive this.

**|**   **paridevita - prasuti** **|**

In a different world, Kuntala learns from her present.

Neither simulations nor circumstances play on her. Kuntala is a child, and Narayana doesn’t spoon-feed.

She doesn’t see. She doesn’t see contenders or allies, she doesn’t see herself. She doesn’t see, doesn’t hear her movement play out – she doesn’t know how to tread and how long.

(There is nothing to see. Mountains loom over her, bundling her in. Beyond are undulating plains. Between are stretches of grasslands.)

She doesn’t fold, and she doesn’t creep. She doesn’t recoil, for nothing happens to her. It is all  _in_  her.

Is she one of the Lord’s enterprises of the yuga? She cannot tell what only Mahakaal knows. For a moment, enamoured that the eternal universe could divide itself as such, so that it never has to be lonesome, she wishes for a friend to show her the path of her procession, apprise her of the limits of her capacity.

Kuntala learns by reflection.

She discovers by the might of the mind, by the noesis that created humans¾not by the burn of lashes on her skin, the debris on her torso. She studies conduct through Prakriti and prakriti.  

She is the child who has no parent to interrogate. She is the child who doesn’t scrape her knee.

She is the child who nods at trees and stars and caves.

She is the child who looks the gods in the eye and grins out her wisdom.

She is the child who dares tell them that she  _knows_  . . . even when they haven’t let her. (She is indulged, always. But for how long?)

She is the child who sees neither demise nor genesis. She is the child who knows no anguish, no felicity.

She is the child of Krishna’s Gita. She is the child of Vishnu’s Prana.  

She is the child sans change. She is also the child of interminable dynamics.

She is the child who doesn’t suffer.

She is the child who still cries.

She is the child who introspects when there is nothing inside.

She is the child with possibilities of virtue and vice, and yet unsoiled. She will stay thus for a long time. She learns – it won’t be evermore.

*

The child learns, and the child lives.

She accomplishes compassion, inclusion. The hills are hers; the grasses and the meadows, the thickets and the plains – all hers.

And when she has larger arms, she performs protection.

And then she learns more. Even her Gopala had to wipe the smears of butter off of His cheeks when His mother cried not in feigned resignation, but true heartbreak.

*

Kuntala has no children.

 _She_  is the child, and she is all she has. She is her people, and each of her people are all of her – she, the child, ingests all, for how else would she introspect? What to ruminate if there is nothing inside? The two aren’t separate; there is no two. There is only her.  _Kuntala._

Kuntala has no children.

She has no one to teach as she never had a teacher. She has no legacy as she had no heredity.

So she opens her eyes and ears.  _Is this what you wanted, Madhava?_  Not impeaching, merely curious, the thrum in her belly arcing along her skin.

_I don’t know what I want, vatse. It’s better if you don’t as well._

It is Maahishmati who teaches Kuntala; it is only to teach her own self, but Kuntala doesn’t care. She will take what He gives her, and create the best paragon she can out of it.

For once, the child experiences before she learns. She sits and doesn’t dance in her knowledge.

She sits. She  _kneels_. And always, always, she learns.

She learns death. She learns birth. She learns the beginning of the end, and she learns the end of the beginning, just as she learned the in-betweens.

The child doesn’t know, she never will, if the knowledge was needed. The child learns what she chooses.

*

Rarely does a child forgive, and she’s just an orphan.

She effectuates execution. Bright death, sharp death, blazing death – sometimes, the Mahakaal is required too. Who is she to separate friendship older than the stars? (She still wishes for a friend, even though she has now learnt: the foe is the better advisor of duty.)

Kuntala will never ask questions again. She has greater forbearance, but getting answers never required patience, only the thrum in her belly.

She will answer those who wish to know. Her eyes will never close again.

She has been a child. Now she will nurture.

*

Kuntala is old.

And Kuntala will never be young. There is no spot for love in life; perhaps in death, she . . .

Even Krishna had to leave his Radha. The world doesn’t have enough place for the love she shields in her belly. Even if it did, she has never looked before. She wouldn’t start now.

The blind, the deaf, the baby, the dead – they all learn. Only, Kuntala refuses to teach the dumb.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References, again, and an erratic, sort-of unreliable narrator.
> 
> I was quite hesitant to post this one. Truthfully, I feel much more comfortable with Maahishmati's personification than I do with Kuntala's, even though the love Kuntala more. (Perhaps because I took more time fleshing Maahishmati out than I gave to Kuntala? *grimaces*) 
> 
> I apologise for any mistakes that may be there in plot or theme - I am too drowsy (considering it's 4:30 in the morning and I haven't slept a wink). *runs (for bed)*
> 
> Please leave a word or two. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all for reading this thing. Kindly leave a word or two. Bricks and tomatoes are welcome too. (No eggs, though - I prefer eating them).


End file.
